


There's A Story At The Bottom Of This Bottle (And I'm Pen)

by GreyBlueSkies21



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: April Is Not Okay, April-Centric, Crisis of Faith, Emotional Baggage, Gen, Heavy Angst, I blame Shonda, Post-14x10, What Have I Done, everyone keeps dying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-10 08:53:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13498700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreyBlueSkies21/pseuds/GreyBlueSkies21
Summary: April would like to say she believes in God.But what's worse?Believing that an all power-full God exists but doesn't care?Or not believing at all?Where is God now?The question she can't answer.(April's faith crisis implodes into a disaster she can't seem to escape. Her journey back stretches her thin and makes her question everything she knows. Post-14x09.)





	1. Malted Liquor

_O Lord, what are human beings that you regard them,_

_or mortals that you think of them?_

_They are like a breath;_

_their days are like a passing shadow._

_\- Psalm 144:3 - 4_

 

 

* * *

 

 

She wakes up with the taste of malt liquor in her mouth and unaccustomed arms around her hips.

 

Swallows regret and aspirin for the hangover she knows she's going to get.

 

Waits until after they shower and tells Vik to leave. 

 

Not directly, of course. (She isn't rude.)

 

Just drops the major hint, words rolling off her tongue, loose and slippery.

 

Isn't surprised when he leaves without a second thought. (She isn't stupid.)

 

Â He had just come for the booze and the sex.

 

And it's not like she can judge.

 

She was after the same thing.

 

Empty and emptying.

 

 

                                                                              ----

 

 

 

Owen raises an eyebrow at the sight of her slinging back scotch like it's sparkling water.

 

At least, she thinks it's scotch. It could be whiskey, or bourbon, or tequila or any other malted, burning concoction that scorches her esophagus with the taste of heavy liquor and engine oil.

 

She shakes her head loosely.  

 

Feels her hair tickle against her bare shoulders, feathery and soft.  

 

"Bad day?"

 

His pitying smile is warm and friendly and kind, crinkling the corners of his eyes and emanating warmth. 

 

Hope. 

 

Smiling like he has all the damn answers.

 

She walks away with a nonchalant, curt nod before he can even sit down. 

 

Decides in that moment that the questions she finds herself asking don't really have answers. 

 

 

                                                                              ---

 

 

She buries herself in her work.

 

Surgery after surgery after surgery, elbow deep in blood and guts. 

 

Chest tubes and arteries, crimson leaks and battered patients ripped at the imaginary seams.

 

Buries herself in the incessant beeping of monitors that fill in the corners of her mind with accusations and guilt.

 

Watches families get brought together and torn apart, suddenly and certainly, decided by something that might as well be a toss of a coin.

 

Heads you win.

 

Tails you lose.

 

Heads.

 

Tails.

 

Manages to give her condolences without her voice tripping over the lump that declared it's residency in the back of her throat. 

 

Vaguely realizes that her condolences mean nothing.

 

Words are pointless in the grand scheme of things.

 

 

                                                                             ----

 

 

She can hear ghosts in the tunnels.

 

Phantom laughs for phantom faces.

 

Sees them slide in and out between ER beds.

 

Hollow faces and glasses eyes.

 

Brain matter on linoleum floors.

 

Ethereal and vague.

 

So vivid that she ends up ramming a scream down her throat, sputtering and choking

 

Makes her feel like she'll suffocate.

 

Choke and die.

 

Disappear into the ether, never to be seen again.

 

 

                                                                         ---

 

 

Heads and tails.

 

Tails and heads.

 

A coin toss she can't escape.

 

 

                                                                               ---

 

 

Malted liquor coats her throat.

 

Black skies and black night and black, inky nightmares.

 

Black and booze and more hazy, inky black.

 

A carousel that never ends.

 

                                                                                 ---

 

 

Reed's ghost follows her.

 

Standing in the corners of every room, every OR, every crack and crevice. 

 

Glassy, unblinking eyes and a little hole in the center of her forehead to boot.

 

It's been centuries.

 

Hours.

 

Years.

 

Minutes and days and seconds and weeks.

 

An infinite everything and nothing at all.

 

 

                                                                                ---

 

 

She finds herself standing halfway between Joe's and the chapel. 

 

Chooses Joe's because the chapel isn't as comforting as it once was.

 

Wonder's if it was ever that comforting at all.

 

 

                                                                                 ---

 

 

She's spiraling, ripped until she's held together by nothing more than a loose thread unravelling and wired.

 

Wonder's if she'll end up disintegrating, insides splayed on black road and grey tiles like so many before her. 

 

Black road and black night and even blacker sky.

 

Black and black and cold and black. 

 

One false move and she just might join them.

 

Another name, another face, another ghost that'll outlast them all.

 

 

                                                                                 ---

 

 

Matthew screams at her in the parking lot, yells drenched full of grief, pain, blame and not much else. 

 

Tells her that she doesn't get it.

 

She's never felt loss before, never felt pain. 

 

An understatement that's eloquently sufficient, given the situation.

 

 

                                                                              ---

 

 

She wonders if he still believes.

 

Wonders if he still clings to faith like he did the days and weeks and years before.

 

Wonders if it makes a difference for either of them.

 

 

                                                                               ----

 

 

Amelia walks in the bar in a manner that makes April think they're both going to regret whatever happens next.

 

It's two in the morning, and the bar bustles with music, alcohol and unending void.

 

She downs another glass of whatever had been placed in front of her while the neurosurgeon raises her fingers and orders something.

 

Orders something cold that reeks of alcohol and fire and tang.

 

Slides onto the stool next to her, frigid glass in hand.

 

 "So, you're drinking now?"

 

A cocky question, meant to thrive on indignation and nonchalance.

 

It fails miserably, words defeated and hollowed before they even exit her mouth. 

 

If the brunette got her message, she certainly doesn't show it, instead choosing to slide the glass down the table, sliding and slipping and sliding 'till it slows to a stop at April's wrist.

 

Tequila.

 

"I'm not. It's for you." 

 

Casually spoken, like she _isn't_ aware of the train wreck April has built herself into.

 

"Why are you here, Amelia?" 

 

Sullen.

 

Straight to the point.

 

She gets a sigh in response, like the answer is so obvious that April should probably know it by now. Gets another sigh when the trauma surgeon indicates that she has no idea after all. 

 

"Owen's worried. And, I have the night off. Not to mention, you've spent the day looking like actual crap, so..."

 

Her response trails off with a wry smirk that makes April think the last part was supposed to make her smile.

 

Or chuckle.

 

Or make her feel something other than numb.

 

It doesn't do any of those things.

 

Instead, it makes her choke on the last of the tequila that was offered. 

 

Eyes water and lungs burn, breathy bitter laughs following along in a dance that strings through the air between them.

 

Never settles, never rests.

 

"So, why'd he send you here? Was it because you can relate to the drinking, or 'cause of the dead baby?"

 

A thousand shadows cross over the woman's face, a whirlwind of stinging pain, fresh and raw. One after the other and then two and five and twelve and millions at time, broken memories and blackened nights. 

 

Chipped and bleeding in a way that only April understands.

 

The comment was cruel and unwarranted. Full of drunk regret and hollowness.

 

(A feeling they both know all too well.)

 

To her credit, Amelia doesn't respond. Doesn't leave either. Just sits there, twirls a dart between her fingers and focuses a glare intently on the dent that speckles the bar table. 

 

Waits patiently for what the disaster they inevitably know is going to come next.

 

Her silent response forms more questions than it answers, and April supplies her own answer to fill the void.

 

Two raised fingers and a lemon wedge crushed between her teeth.

 

 

                                                                             ----

 

 

She lets the thunderous thump and thud and pitter-patter of the music replace the pulse in her veins and drinks herself to oblivion.

 

Drinks because she can't bear the thought of thinking about an invisible, angry god and blood and brain matter and dead children.

 

Ex-fiancées, bubbling crimson floods and bullets smashing skulls. 

 

Unblinking eyes.

 

She'd scream if her lungs could cooperate enough to conjure the air needed to create sound.

 

 

                                                                              ---

 

 

Amelia drives her home.

 

Cuts her off after the seventh drink and threatens to call Owen or Webber or Jackson if she doesn't comply.

 

She'd like to say she indignantly refused her offer, but the thought of Jackson being anywhere near her brings up way too many memories that she doesn't want to deal with.

 

Plus, she looked like the poster child for _fucked up_ with the added combination of drunk and in-the-desperate-need-for-an-intervention.

 

Too raw to argue.

 

Ends up stumbling over a speed bump and uses Amelia's grip as a crutch the rest of the way to her car.

 

Hears absolutely no words, no response from the other woman until she mutters something about not throwing up in her car when April finally closes the car door.

 

Drunken rage takes over at the point and she finds it extremely difficult to not make some snarky comment about how the neurosurgeon may or not be head over heels for her ex-husband

 

Settles on the fact that, A, she is definitely _not_ one to judge in the _I'm-still-in-love-with-my-ex-husband_ category and, B, walking home drunk in the pouring rain is something she wants to avoid.

 

Purses her lips and spends the following seconds fumbling with the seatbelt.

 

Wondering what in the actual crap she's gotten herself in to. 

 

 

                                                                                ---

 

 

The neurosurgeon is a frothing combination of pissed and concerned, edged and hardened. 

 

Whether she's pissed at her or the rest of the world, April can't tell.

 

Decides that, in the end, it probably wouldn't make a difference.

 

 

                                                                            ---

 

 

It's been ten minutes since they've bothered with the mundane act of speaking to one another.

 

Conversation cut to a minimum between the first red light and the park that's minutes before her apartment.

 

She spends her time staring at her reflection in the rain speckled window.

 

Doesn't recognize the shadow that stares back.

 

Prefers it that way.

 

Runs a finger down the shaded glass, tracing a drop of rain that snakes and falls and splits her reflection in half.

 

Thinks about tonight because it's too way late for yesterday and tomorrow seems so freaking far away, it's impossible to reach.

 

 

                                                                                 ---

 

 

The car slows to a stop outside her apartment building. 

 

Amelia doesn't motion for her to get out, just watches her with the most unreadable look on her face.

 

Smoke-like, wispy and vague.

 

The sudden urge to apologize drives words that stumble out of her mouth, lack of sleep and the haze of being drunk causing every syllable to get caught in her teeth, lodge themselves in her vocal chords.

 

She's way too tired to put an effort in and Amelia is way too empty to say anything else.

 

"I'm sorry." 

 

_Sorry for my drunken mess._

_Sorry for screwing up your night._

_Sorry about your son, and Derek and every other dead person in this godforsaken hospital-_

 

_I'm so sorry._

 

Five minutes later, she's fumbling with the key, fingers not willing to steady, not willing to cooperate long enough to open the door.

 

Finally manages to get the key in and hears the neurosurgeon respond, her voice hanging in the limbo between a whisper and silence, quiet and soft. 

 

"You have nothing to be sorry about."

 

Spoken with a firm finality that April isn't sure she believes.

 

 

                                                                               -----

 

 

 

They get the news in the middle of attending lounge, one rare sunny morning.

 

Ironic, if she thinks about it.

 

Amelia and Alex were talking about some kid with a leptomeningeal metastasis, Arizona had been showing Meredith pictures of Zola and Sofia's sleepover and April was in the corner, nursing a lukewarm coffee that may or may not have liquor in it.

 

Lost in her own thoughts until Meredith's phone rings and her coffee cup clatters to the floor. 

 

Spills warm liquid that drenches the tiles with sticky brown fluid, filling the crack and crevices with a tacky slick flood that has no end. 

 

_Bailey had a heart attack._

 

Silence envelops them, spread like a thick fog, the seconds and minutes and hours and millennials that pass telling a thousand stories.

 

A thousand fears.

 

The quiet, calming silence last for a second.

 

Then the room implodes. 

 

Questions screamed, and conversations dropped, panic flying amid. 

 

Blood rushes to her head, fear seeps into the hollow marrow that she calls bones somewhere between the questioned _what's_ , and _how's_ and _is she okay_ , and a million other phrases she can't seem to process.

 

Causes her insides to reel and churn and bubble with an undeniable fear and dread.

 

Heavy panic that mimics the dark inky black of nightmares, a panic that's clings to her shoulders like a cloak she can't seem to shake off.

 

A second skin.

 

 

                                                                              ----

 

 

She barely manages the walk to the chapel, stumbling and stuttering, falling and failing all the way.

 

Bailey had a heart attack.

 

_Bailey had a heart attack._

_Bailey._

_Had._

_A._

_Heart._

_Attack._

The words string together a statement that her can't seem to understand. Circles and squares and syllables that don't fit in the picture that makes up Bailey's immortality.

 

She's had her life on the line, yes. But she's never stared at death.

 

Never watched him blink back.

 

She was supposed to be the safe one.

 

Everyone else has nearly died, everyone has had pieces of them float and scurry throughout the linoleum grey hospital floors.

 

But not Bailey.

 

 

                                                                                ---

 

 

The wooden doors close with an audible clink that echoes through her mind, and she shuffles her feet until she reaches a pew.

 

Halfway sitting, halfway standing. 

 

One hundred percent falling into an abyss she can't climb out of.

 

"No." 

 

Her voice echoes throughout the room, sullen and weary, barely above a hushed whisper.

 

Wound with gut wrenching panic and mind-numbing fear.

 

And anger. 

 

She's so freaking angry.

 

It's the only two things she's certain of. 

 

Her brain can't process anything else.

 

She just knows that, right now, her chest is completely overtaken with fire and panic and she ca't _fucking breathe_ and she's so angry she might end up exploding, dragging the whole hospital with her into the abyss.

 

"You don't get to do this, okay? Not Bailey. Yo-You've taken too many of us already. Charles and Reed and Lex-Lexie and Mark and Der'k an-and... No. No more."

 

She hiccups through the last part, choking on names and faces forever implanted in her brain. Speaks with utter certainty like she has control over anything that follows.

 

She thinks of them and Samuel and a group of boys that were blown to pieces back in Jordan and her breaths increase in speed, each one firing at a faster rate than then previous, a rapid succession that chips away at her soul.

 

Black and black and black.

 

Malted liquor and unfamiliar hands.

 

Silence.

 

Silence and void and screams and black.

 

Everything and nothing at all.

 

Emptying and emptied and empty.

 

 

                                                                               ---

 

 

She screams into her fist when she lower back meets the floor, a conglomeration of shrieking emotions and racing thoughts and a million other reactions fired by her synapses that April can't possibly begin to comprehend. 

 

Feels unbridling terror seep into the marrow of her bones, slow and sure.

 

Tears well in her eyes, the room spinning and blurring behind a waterfall of saltwater begging she can't even try to stop.

 

"No more, okay? Please- Just. No more God, please just no more, no more, nomorenomorenomorenomorenomoreno-"

 

The mantra fills the empty space in the room, leaves her broken and sobbing and bleeding.

 

Choking from the inside out. 

 

Throat ragged, raw and red.

 

 

                                                                                 ---

 

 

She ends up staring at the cross the adorns the front of the chapel.

 

Ponders if he's staring at her like she is him. 

 

Ponders if he's even listening.

 

(Ponders if he even cares.)

 

 

\---

 

 

She hopes he's listening.

 

Finds the probability of it extremely low but hopes anyway.

 

After all, she didn't see God when a psycho shot up the hospital and the floors ran red with blood.

 

Didn't see him when a plane fell out of the sky or when Samuel squeezed her finger and faded in her arms.

 

She hasn't felt his presence in a long time.

 

But she finds herself desperately wanting to.

 

Wants the comfort and hope she can't seem to find her way back too.

 

_Where is God now?_

 

The million-dollar question.

 

The one she can't answer.

 

 

\---

 

 

She passes by Arizona in the hallway.

 

Watches her raise an eyebrow, a silent question.

_Are you okay?_

 

She rolls her own eyes and nods back in a silent response that is immediately received and understood. 

 

It's been years since they've needed words to communicate, and the look on Arizona's face tells April that she understood. Maybe a little more than she needed to.

 

She doesn't buy it.

 

 The trauma surgeon takes her cue and leaves before she can respond to the exasperation laced sigh that is more than enough to make Arizona's point resoundingly clear.

 

Passes on the chance to reply, which to her seems like such a monumental effort and she's empty. 

 

Has nothing left to give.

 

Emptied and emptying and empty.

 

 

\---- 

 

Harriet wakes up crying.

 

Squealing and wailing and whimpering cries that echoes in the dark of night.

 

It takes April two seconds to realize that she had fallen asleep, another two to realize that Harriet was crying and a full five seconds to throw on a rob and run the distance between the living room and the nursery, soothing the child with coos and reassurances that mean absolutely nothing. 

 

"Hey there, baby..."

 

A reassurance, soft and light amidst the chaos that swirls around them.

 

A chaos only she can see.

 

The toddler ends up falling asleep as April rocks her, the feeling of warm skin and feathery curls against her cold skin both comforting and paralyzing; a paradox of sorts.

 

Decides on moving back and forth while letting her mind wander, remembering another child she barely got to hold. 

 

Another name, dead and gone.

 

\---

 

 

Later, over a glass of wine and a medical journey, she'll let her mind drift.

 

Imagines a happy, bubbly three-year-old playing and frolicking through green meadows and warm sun.

 

Dreams and conjures up hopes of a life where she can hold him tight and never let go.

 

But the line between her dreams and reality has blurred these days, hazes and mists until she can't distinguish what is real and what is not.

 

She's no longer as confident as she used to be. She's started to wonder, begins to contemplate if Jackson is right after all.

 

She wonders but doesn't want to believe what he does.

 

Believing it would mean that her son is just dead, and the thought of never seeing him again terrifies her more than anything else.

 

 Maybe even more than the fear of an angry God that just watches as the world falls apart.

 

 

\----

 

 

Maybe is as definite as a tomorrow that's never guaranteed for any soul who steps forth in the hospital walls.

 

Her decision is as blurred as the reality she lives in.

 

Her decision is as blurred as the ghosts that are stacked up against them.

 

A shadow of death they can no longer ignore.

 

She really has no idea what she believes in these days.

 

 

\---

 

 

She dreams.

 

No, dreaming is a kind term for the memories that wrench screams from her soul. 

 

She has nightmares.

 

Aprons of blood and chunks of brain matter that she can't quite manage to tangle herself free from.

 

Blank, glassy eyes into the swirling red and grey.

 

Wakes with a startle and a breathy yell she barely manages to hold down.

 

Terror that seeps and dips in and out of her lungs, seeps into the marrow of her bones and replaces the blood in her veins.

 

Tries not to think too hard about the macabre images that no longer disturb her in the way they should.

 

Death and blood and more death that cycles around her life, constant and unending.

 

A vortex she can't get free of.

 

 ---

 

 

She avoids the bar at all costs.

 

Hopes to avoid the questions that consume her.

 

Hopes to avoid spending another night with tequila and sorrows and infinite void.

 

Prays for answers she can't begin to conceive.

 

Prays because it's the only thing left to do.

 

 

                                                                               ---

 

 

"Incoming MVA. Ambulance one and three reported a TBI with a GSW between five and six."

 

A voice erupts from the phone she's holding to her ear, fast and professional.

 

Warren. 

 

"Somebody page Shepherd and Grey. Get cardio and ENT down here, and prep OR's one through three."

 

Her response to the static that now fills her ear is directions barked throughout a nearly empty ER and hands that slide her hair into a loose ponytail.

 

"DeLuca, set up crash carts. Helm, go get all the o-neg you can carry. Wilson, Glasses and James. Gown down, you're with me."

 

Gowns and gloves are thrown on, resolve steeled and supplies readied.

 

More orders, names ticked off a list.

 

More supplies.

 

More chaos.

 

An enormous, six car MVC sends her spinning into the mania she so steadily associates with trauma surgery.

 

It's fast and dirty and loud and full of a never-ending adrenaline rush that threatens to wipe her off her feet.

 

It screeches chaos and screams blood and gore, a whirlwind of disorder.

 

It's imperfectly perfect.

 

It's her.

 

She ends the day shoving her fists inside a shuddering chest cavity and holds together a torn artery the entire ride to the OR.

 

Spends a four-hour surgery stitching and praying and clamping and trying to hold this poor boy's insides together.

 

He flatlines at exactly at 20:07.

 

 

                                                                                   ----

 

 

She vomits when it's over.  

 

Leaves Maggie standing next to the sink with a hurried nod and bolts.

 

Barely makes it to a hidden bin that's placed where she knows no one will be there to ask questions.

 

No peering eyes.

 

She vomits bile, putrid acid and drags a loose strand of hair behind her ear. 

 

Rakes raw hands that are seemingly still streaked with blood and gore down scrubs that have turned black and blurry with tears.

 

Terrifying and obliterating and a billion other adjectives she'd avoided conjuring.

 

An infinity she never had the guts to admit.

 

(Remembers why trauma surgery isn't as perfect as she thought.)

 

 

                                                                                ---

 

 

She gets drunk at a bar that could be Joe's but isn't.

 

Breaks the promise she made to herself and everyone else who passed by her and downs fiery liquor.

 

Feels it ignite a path down through her lungs and into her liver, a scorching fire that matches the unholy rage that reigns over her soul. 

 

Screams silence curses and questions about unanswered prayers and the looming shadow of death that settles around her like a second skin.

 

_What kind of God let's an innocent child die?_

_How much more are we supposed to deal with?_

 

And the last question, spoken like a dare to whoever might be listening.

 

_Where is God now?_

 

Gets drunk and morose and watches the bartender pour her shot after shot after shot of tequila.

 

Realizes then that she's taking the slow road to oblivion

 

Doesn't care to stop.

 

She'd come here to remember and was drinking to forget.

 

She doesn't _want_ to stop.

 

Still doesn't stop when she feels a palm settle on her thigh and drags the tone of the evening straight into the hellhole it crawled out of.

 

Smirks.

 

Just where she'd hoped it would end.

 

 

                                                                          ----

 

 

She wakes up with the taste of malt liquor in her mouth and unaccustomed arms around her hips.

 

She wakes up with more questions than answers.

 

_Where is God now?_

 

The one question she can't answer.  

 

Can't rationalize.

 

Can't flipping find a reason to explain the never-ending silence.

 

She focuses on the malted liquor because she doesn't have the energy or the answers to focus on questions and hope and invisible, uncaring gods and ghosts and black silence.

 

She focuses on malted liquor and not much else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on a prompt by PandaLiz.
> 
>  
> 
> Will probably be multi-chapter.
> 
>  
> 
> Comments? Thoughts? Put 'em below.


	2. Silence (It's A God Awful Sound)

 

 

_Be not hast in they spirit to be angry:_

_for anger resteh in the bosom of fools._

_\- Ecclesiastes 7:9_

 

 

* * *

 

 

  
The taste of cigarette smoke and lies and sweat and shots of tequila fill her mouth as her lips smash into his.  
  
  
Hot, uneven breaths wisp at her hair.  
  
  
A stranger.  
  
  
Exactly what she envisioned when she dropped her expectations somewhere down around her ankles.  
  
  
The hallways were unsurprisingly packed, and they've managed to crowd up a bathroom stall at a pub that could be Joe's but isn't.  
  
  
She ends up leaving when his experienced hands catch the loops of her belt, when calloused, rough hands undo the buttons of her jeans.  
  
  
Pushes her way out of the smoke soaked bar and into the fog of unfamiliar streets, ignoring the curses that followed her.  
  
  
She never even caught his name.

  
  
  
\---

 

 

She calls Riggs at four in the morning.

 

Listens to his voice, husky with sleep, echoing through her phone and in the air.

 

"Kepn'r?"

 

Chokes out a half sob, half laugh that serves as her response.

 

Mumbles an apology and hangs up before he can question what happened.

 

Drowns out the night with potent tequila gold and thinks of how lucky he is.

 

How lucky he and Christina and Addison and Izzie and Edwards all are.

 

The ones that left the darkened hell that surrounds the hospital.

 

The ones that got away.

 

 

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

Her well mapped plan of being sober enough to drive dissolves somewhere between tequila shots two and three.

 

She's somewhat past tequila shot four or five or maybe even six when she decides to drive home.

 

Decides to test the waters, roll the dice and measure just how mortal she actually is.

 

She's three quarters to convinced that no God or man are watching close enough to stop her. 

 

 

 

 

\---

 

 

She nearly hits a squirrel.

 

Or a cat or skunk or maybe even a fucking _person_.

 

She realizes that she needs to rein her shit in.

 

Can't seem to put the pieces together enough to actually _do it._

 

 

 

 

 

\---

 

  
Breathe.

 

Silence.

 

Breathe.

 

Silence.

 

Breathe, breathe, breathe, just _fucking breathe._

 

Silence.

 

\---

 

 

 

 

  
Her old commanding officer sends her a post card and a picture of the men she once fought with playing soccer.

 

She rips it into impossibly tiny squares, turns off the smoke alarm and burns the shredded remains in her kitchen sink with a lighter and a shot of whatever she had been drinking.

 

Thinks with a bitter clarity that she should be pleased.

 

She has everything she's ever wanted.

 

She should be happy, but instead decides to scream at God because it feels right and drinks because it's all she has left.

 

Wonder's how long it'll take to drown in the booze she's so readily consuming.

 

Is nearly tempted to find out.

 

 

 

 

\---

 

 

  
She snaps at Owen.

 

He had been talking non-stop, stringing words through the air that her mind couldn't quite process and she broke.

 

Turned around and told him to shut the hell up.

 

Now she's standing there, holding a chest tube halfway in the air, like she's trying to find the words needed to backpedal the _hell_ out of the situation she put herself in.

 

Like she's trying to find something to say, jaws working, mind racing.

 

They're gone.

 

Every last word, syllable, letter, sound that she's ever learned has disappeared, lost itself in the void and stolen the oxygen from her lungs in the process.

 

She apologized in the end.

 

Made some half-assed excuses about Harriet keeping her up that neither of them believed and promised to make it up to him with drinks they both know she's never going to follow up on.

 

Lets the words just tumble out of her mouth and spill to the floor, bouncing and rolling between his shoes, taking pieces of her with it.

 

Ended the statement with some smile that the happy, chirpy April everyone expects would probably give and promptly left the room.

 

 

She apologized in the end because Owen Hunt was one person she definitely did not want on her back.

 

She apologized because Arizona had seen the entire thing and was seconds away from opening a conversation April really wanted to avoid.

 

She apologized, but neither of them believed it.

 

 

 

\---

 

 

Her heart stopped once.

 

She's not entirely convinced that it ever started up again.

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

  
She thinks she's been frozen and chilled and hollowed all the way through to her freaking bone marrow.

 

She hasn't been warm for years now. Today and yesterday and tomorrow is absolutely no different.

 

She wonder's whether to blame God or Reed for it.

 

Decides _fuck it_ , and blames them both.

 

Thinks of Gary Clark and bone and blood and brain matter and blames them too.

 

Blames herself between mouthfuls of booze because it's the only thing left to do.

 

 

\---

 

 

 

  
That she'll find another stranger to screw again is strangely inevitable.

 

 

 

\---

 

 

The same cop that shot twelve year old Eric is found dead in his apartment.

 

A bullet hole replacing the skin and bone and blood and brain that previously occupied the area between his eyes.

 

Execution style.

 

Clean and swift.

 

April wonders if that's God's way of getting justice.

 

Wonders if it's as fair and kind and warming and just as she was taught to believe.

 

Thinks that it may have been his way of sending the poor bastard to hell.

 

Wonders how long it'll take before she joins him there.

                    

 

 

\---

 

She makes a cheese and ham sandwich with the forgotten ends of days old bread, half a slice of ham and three slices of Swiss she didn't even remember getting.

 

Barely manages to swallow the dry, heavy monstrosity of a sandwich before dry heaving into the sink.

 

Twice.

 

Fills her stomach with a cup of coffee she made in the morning and a pair of two tiny white sleeping pills because she's way too tired to go shopping and way too morose to talk to any delivery man for take out.

 

Ignores the paradox of it all and tries sleeping.

 

Is no longer surprised when bloodshot, sleepless eyes greet her in the mirror.

 

 

 

                                                                               ---

 

She passes by David's room when he's talking to a priest.

 

 

(Of course he fucking is.)

 

 

Hears him ask the one question they've both needed the answer to.

 

 

_Where is God now?_

Well, he certainly isn't responding, that's for fucking sure.

 

 

She'd laugh at her own sarcasm if she had enough energy left.

 

 

 

 

                                                                                ---

 

 

 

 

She's spiraling into a abyss she can't pull herself out of.

 

 

Identifies the vague notion that she's two seconds away from getting herself killed or attending a intervention staged by people who have the persistent, but misguided idea that she needs to be taken care of.

 

 

That she needs help.

 

 

(She does. She needs someone to help her. Needs someone, anyone at all).

 

 

She tips the bottomless bottle of tequila back.

 

 

Watches the TV screen blur in front of her, colors melding into a big cloudy haze that she can't seem to make sense of.

 

 

Everything is the same nowadays.

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

  
She visits Bailey a good two days after getting the news.

 

An action brought on by too little sleep and too much but never quite enough cheap bourbon needed to keep the myriad of ghosts and thoughts of angry Gods at bay.

 

Gives the nurse who pointed out the room number a forced smile that seems to be her default setting these days and trudged down familiarly unfamiliar halls, hands quivering at her sides.

 

Opens the door with a quiet swiftness lest she might disturb whoever is inside.

 

She does.

 

Maggie practically jumped out of her seat, nearly sending the pitcher half full with water falling onto the floor and waking Meredith, who in her surprise, ended up sending a half finished crossword puzzle sliding to a stop at April's sneakers.

 

The trauma surgeon holds both her hands up in a matter of apology that probably looks as awkward as it feels and wordlessly hands the scattered papers back to Meredith, who warily accepts and eyes her.

 

"Sorry about that."

 

The words barely came out as a hushed whisper, thick and awkward, eyes darting in every direction but Meredith, who still hasn't broken her stare.

 

Something tells her that either Amelia or Arizona haven't learned how to shut their _damn_ mouths.

 

(Or maybe she's just that obvious.)

 

A chair is offered to her and she sits, relishes in the way that it presses solidly into the curves of her back, uncomfortable but solid beneath her weight.

 

Lets the sisters fill her in.

 

Listens to them talk about how Bailey had practically thrown everyone out.

 

Sent Warren and Tuck home with the threat of not letting them back in unless they got sleep.

 

Kicked out Webber with the silent demand that he go to a AA meeting. Sent Amelia after him to make sure he went through with it and fell into a restless slumber.

 

April would like to say she was surprised, but she really wasn't.

 

Bailey always was the one in charge, long before she got the title to prove it.

 

 

 

                                                                                ---

 

 

She left after a full hour of uncomfortable silence.

 

Meredith spent it darting her eyes between some patient's scans and her cellphone, Maggie played something that looked like Angry Birds, Bailey was still sleeping and April intently staring at the heart monitor, watching and waiting for everything to go downhill.

 

It would have be calming.

 

The silence.

 

It would have been calming if the machine didn't blare screams of death and silent, unmoving hearts that made them jump up with a fear they didn't know they had.

 

Took precious air from they're lungs in the seconds before realizing that the blaring emanated from another room, another patient.

 

That's how April left.

 

Nerves wired, muscles tense with adrenaline and dread that pumped through her veins.

 

Muttered some excuse she didn't even remember forming and stumbled out of the room, refusing, rather stoically, to turn back.

 

Emptied out the contents of her stomach in a bush she didn't remember being planted and filled it back up with cheap booze and empty curses into the night air.

 

Remembers other visits to hospital rooms, other friends and families and strangers lying broken over the years.

 

She doesn't visit Bailey again.

 

(April doesn't think the chief will notice. Doesn't think she'll even care.)

 

                                                                                  ---

 

 

 

  
Her head is heavy and lungs are full of empty space.

 

Arizona is standing at the nurses station, eyebrow raised in the same way as the day before.

 

Same question.

 

_Are you okay?  
_

 

A cliché clusterfuck of a question that nearly sends her spiraling, laughing madly in an effort to undo all the seams she's so carefully woven.

 

She's nearly laughing and Arizona is standing there, concern scrawled on her face like she wants to help, like she can help, and suddenly April is overcome by the desperate urge to let her.

 

Ends up opening her mouth with the ghost of an answer on her lips and absolutely no words coming out.

 

The consonants and vowels and air have gotten stuck between her teeth, paved a layer on her tongue, occupied the space down her throat, and settled like thick cement in her lungs.

 

And she's left standing there, mouth slightly open, forgetting how to breathe.

 

She leaves before Arizona can cross the distance between them.

 

Alternates rest of her day between the chapel and crouching in the closet that Reed's skull blew up in.

 

Traces the path of imaginary blood and bits of brain down linoleum tile only she can see and mutters silent prayers with unmoving lips to a God who most likely doesn't care.

 

She's one-hundred percent sure she's still doesn't remember how to breathe.

 

Reckons that it's probably for the best.

 

She's fighting a losing battle anyway.

 

Lost and losing.

 

 

                                                                                 ----

 

 

  
The charade of being okay has become so _fucking_ desperate and hilarious that she can't help but laugh.

 

Listens to the bitter sound echo throughout her bathroom and join the sound of endless silence in her head as she stares at the mirror.

 

Apparently, she's lost all her marbles.

 

One by one by tens and millions until they've all rolled all a-freaking-way.

 

Ends her morning grinning back at her reflection, stark, raving mad

 

 

 

                                                                               ---

 

 

  
She dreams of vivid red and a languid river that snakes its way towards her.

 

Red blood. Unblinking eyes.

 

Wakes with the tang of copper on her taste buds and struggles around the heavy cloak of sleep and the phantom taste before her limbs can co-ordinate long enough to produce something even remotely resembling motion.

 

Drives to the corner store at the end of her street and buys a multitude of cheap, fiery bottles of booze with cash that she shouldn't spend and downs them on the way to the pier.

 

One by one by one by one, heavy liquor setting nerves that are already frayed to loose cotton ends on fire and lungs that have long since stopped functioning properly into a seizing frenzy.

 

Sends her sputtering and coughing while black spots dance in her peripheral vision.

 

Notes with a sigh that drinking herself to oblivion has become something of a theme.

 

Contemplates swinging the car into the incoming traffic on her left.

 

Doesn't.

 

But only just.

 

                                                                                 ---

 

 

April spends the rest of her ride watching the world blur and blur and blur around her.

 

Spends rest of the ride asking the same question over and over again.

 

_Where is God now?_

Decides that dancing with death is a cycle she does not want to repeat and opts to go home.

 

Gets halfway there before stopping at a intersection, waiting for the green light (lights?) to blink on before making the left turn required to get home.

 

Catches sight of two blinding lights that she vaguely recognizes should _not_ be in front of her.

 

Blinding lights that are steady and unwavering and definitely _not_ turning from they're course of smashing into her.

 

_Fuck._

She thinks of exactly how much damage a minivan driving at sixty miles per hour can do to a person.

 

Thinks of cracked ribs and rivers of blood and hearts that no longer beat.

 

Thinks of Reed's unblinking eyes and brain matter on linoleum floors and reckons that this whole night was a bad idea.

 

Thinks that maybe this all was a really, really, _really_ bad idea.

 

_Where is God no-_

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry not sorry. 
> 
>  
> 
> I'll probably update by early Friday morning. I'm thinking of making this four chapters long. Maybe five.
> 
>  
> 
> Comments? Thoughts? Put em' below.


	3. How To Save A Life

_Though an army encamp against me,_

_my heart shall not fear;_

_though war arise against me,_

_yet I will be confident_

_\- Psalms 27:3_

 

* * *

 

 

Silence.

 

 

Silence, silence silencesilencesilencesilencesi-

 

 

Silence.

 

 

* 

 

 

 

When the sliding and screeching shriek of metal against metal and earth and more metal and plant and lamp posts and the blood numbing screaming of the entire universe as it falls apart all stops, she registers silence.

 

When her hands wrench the steering wheel all the way to the left and the car spins and spins and the soft skin of her forehead hits the hard-plastic dashboard and then everything comes to a blinding, pounding, halting, stop.

 

She.

 

Registers.

 

_Silence._

 

Absolute silence in the wake of the unimaginable cacophony that had preceded it.

  

There is silence.

  

And then the back of her skull hits the car seat.

 

Then there is nothing.

 

 

 *

 

 

She comes to slowly.

 

Slow blinks and slower breaths.

 

Slow blinks and breaths and the even slower firing of synapses in her brain as it pounds and pounds and pounds and pounds and pounds, a staccato beat that threatens to consume her whole.

 

For a faint second, she questions if she's dead.

  

Or dying.

  

Or dead and dying.

 

She wonders if she's anything at all. 

  

The lights burn black spots and scatter images and memories and all basic cognitive function from her brain.

 

 _Yea, this night was a_ really _bad idea._

 

 

 

*

 

 

She wonders if this is what Derek felt like. After he got hit.

 

Wonders how long it'll take till she joins him.

 

Finds herself, for the third time this week, almost _wanting_ too.

 

 

 *

 

 

 

She somehow manages to get the door open.

  

She doesn't remember how it happened.

 

Doesn't remember the motion of getting her seatbelt off or opening the door.

 

She does remember falling out of the car seat and onto the damp gritty asphalt, pain jolting through her wrist, the pounding in her head returning to pierce the space behind her left eye.

 

She screamed then; inside her head.

 

Frustration and fear and the fact that her head won't stop freaking pounding and muddy puddles of water that soak into the very marrow of her bones.

 

Wonders exactly how much she managed to mess up this time.

 

 

 

 *

 

 

Breathe.

 

Breathe.

 

Breathe, breathe, breathe, just _fucking breathe._

 

 

 

 *

 

 

 

There are other's voices.

 

Breathy groans and words shouted into cold air, syllables and letters released into the night.

  

Rolling through the street and sticking her skin, a juxtaposition of silence and screaming.

  

Everything and nothing at all.

 

The sound of a car screeching away and other noises that she can't quite seem to comprehend.

 

But then the pain in her chest lessens, and her wrist isn't screaming, which is nice, and everything else quiets long enough for her to gather all the marbles she lost when the car gyrated and spun out of control.

 

She accepts the momentary reprieve for the gift that it is, uses it to roll onto her back, mud and pebbles staining her sleeves.

  

The sky overhead bleeds in and out of her line of sights, blurring and hazing at intervals too fleeting to keep up with.

  

Too fast.

  

And then everything seems to clear up, precision and focus and so much more, and she ends up staring at the stars.

  

Clear and bright.

  

Then that voice comes back and the world spins and she's back to reality.

 

Back to the black sky and black night.

 

Black on black on hazy white stars and more black.

 

(Really, it all goes downhill from there.)

 

 

 *

 

 

It feels like she's been lying down for hours.

  

Hours upon hours that have elapsed without her knowledge of the event even occurring.

 

Hours and hours fade into the bitter clarity and realization that only minutes have actually passed and the person not even a couple feet away is making a sound no person should ever naturally make.

 

Ragged breathing strung through the smoke in the air, bright lights reflected on pebbled safety glass shards and muddy water that's cold but not cold enough.

 

She wants to help them.

  

Get up.

  

Move.

  

Do _something_.

 

But her movements are jerky, too heavy and light.

  

Too far away and close, unfocused and precise all in the same freaking split second.

  

And her head won't stop pounding.

 

Black and white and up to all the damn way down.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

Her head won't stop pounding, the blood in her veins won't stop throbbing, and she remembers another time when this very feeling occurred.

 

_Please, I'm someone's child._

A choked sob escapes her mouth and echoes in the air, images of languid red rivers and cold metal and black skies flooding her brain.

 

It makes her suffocate.

 

Like she'll choke and die right there, lying on the cold street

 

History repeated once more.

 

 

 

 *

 

 

 

The earth shakes as wobbly hands and concrete numb limbs push her upward.

 

She doesn't think she'll ever remember how the world got torn and wrenched sideways, jolted from numb normal into calamitous chaos that overtook them all.

  

The earth spins.

 

Spins and spins and spins and spins.

 

She wonders how long it'll take for her to start spinning too.

 

And endless cycle she won't be able to escape.

 

 

 

 *

 

 

 

She stumbles. 

 

Blood numbing nausea and that fucking pounding that never quite seemed to go away, never quite left.

 

She stumbles and just barely manages to get back up, hands outstretched to prevent any fall that might follow.

  

The whole street around her is a wreck.

 

Scattered debris and twisted metal and smoke and fog and gas in the air, so thick and wet that it chokes the air out of her lungs, a vice she can't escape.

  

There's glass on the ground, littered across the street, flickers of light dancing off of it.

  

An illuminated bread crumb trail, like a statement to whoever cares to notice, a blazing path for the upturned car that nearly hit her moments ago.

  

The trauma surgeon tried talking. Tried reaching whoever was unconscious three feet away.

 

But as much as she tried, as much as she'd gone through the deliberate motion of moving her lips, of sounding out words and syllables by carefully crafted syllables, nothing came out.

  

Nothing came out but breathy releases into cool night air, thin and short-lived.  

  

Tired and true.

 

White bright and inky pitch dark, emptiness in between.

 

Poetic, in a sense.

 

 

 *

 

 

 

 

She manages to get the little boy and his father out of the car that nearly slammed into her two moments ago.

  

The man is battered, black-red blood trailing down from the gash on his head all the way to the crook of his neck. 

  

Years of training cut through the haze of booze automatically, almost innate, and she goes into work mode.

 

The scarf she had been wearing is wrapped around the top of his skull, her jacket covering the man's abdomen, and her hands checking for any other injuries.

 

To her left, the little boy with bright green eyes and shaggy blonde hair is crying, knees tucked under his chin, his left hand wrapped around his tiny legs and right hand clutching a tiny stuffed green rhino.

  

The sight of him makes the rage that had been replacing the blood in her veins for months now begin to bubble and froth.

 

She barely manages to catch the sensation of a scream and the bursts of hysteria that claw at her throat, shoving them back down in attempt to look a little less threatening.

  

This little boy is no more than five years old and he's watching the growing pool of his father's blood, slick and slipping across cracks in the street.

 

She doesn't know whether she wants to pray or curse.

 

Decides that it either of the two probably won't help her at the moment and settles on focusing for the barrage of empty thoughts that are inevitably going to come. 

 

 

 

 *

 

 

 

She sees blood slide down the crack of the street and she thinks of another person's blood, trailing down linoleum floors.

 

She thinks of Reed and unblinking eyes and fight the urge to throw up mordant acid into the gutter.

 

 

 

 *

 

 

"What's your name bud?"

  

The boy blinks, as if he didn't hear her. And then:

 

"My mommy says not to talk to strangews."

 

She fights (and fails) the motion of keeping a smile off her face, grinning at the bright boy while tightening the jacket around the father's oozing midsection.

  

A twisted ghost of a smile that feels both expertly painted on and undeniably real the very same time.

 

"Right. That's good, that's really good. You should never ever tell your name to strangers."

 

Pause. Pounding and the action of trying to catch her failing breath.

 

"But, I'm a doctor, okay? My name is April, and I'm a surgeon. I need to help you and your dad, but I can't do that if I don't know your names."

  

The nameless boy shakes his head, exchanging a thousand words in the action.

 

Stubborn.

 

 Frustration builds up inside her again, and she brings a crimson stained hand to her nose bridge, willing the pounding in her head to go away.

 

Forces a shuddered breath into her lungs, unsteady and erratic, a desperate bid to calm down long enough to think straight.

 

Organize her thoughts into some semblance of a considered response. 

 

"Okay then. Are you hurting anywhere?"

  

Another shake of the head.

  

Good.

 

She moves her hand from its spot on her nose bridge and runs it down the side of mystery man's face and rests it on his shoulder, for comfort.

 

(For him or for her, she really doesn't know.)

 

He's breathing, though not as smoothly as she'd like, and although the skin of his stomach is shredded, the wound doesn't seem too deep and the bleeding has already slowed. 

 

She reaches to fingers to the vein in his neck, pleased to find that his pulse drums steadily under her fingers.

  

_Da-thump, da-thump, da-thump..._

 

He's breathing, and his heart is beating and maybe, just maybe, Kepner thinks that this unlucky mystery man just might be lucky enough walk away with a concussion and some stitches.

 

But then she notices what looks like a mixture of blood and cerebrospinal fluid leaking out of his ear and sluggishly trailing down to the nape of his neck, forming a patchy, pale pink stain on the collar of his shirt.

 

Maybe, she thinks, that he's not so lucky after all.  

 

 

 

 *

 

 

 

Somewhere between the muttered _crap_ and _shit_ , that echoes through her head, she manages to remember that she has a phone. 

 

Tells the little boy to grab said phone.

  

Tries not to scream when he brings it back soaked in the liquor that had spilled and formed a puddle in her passenger seat.

  

Useless.

 

Breathe.

 

In.

  

Out.

 

In and out.

  

Out and in.

 

"Okay sweetheart. Can you go grab me that big red bag I have in the back seat? We-..We are going to find a way to help your dad, okay?"

 

She moves quickly, rushing to evaluate the man with the little bit she has.

  

Uses the alcohol to sterilize her red stained hands, uses her penlight to check his pupils and stethoscope to check his breathing.

 

"The bag's not twere."

  

"What?"

 

No, I always keep it there, check again, she nearly says.

 

It's always were I put after work, are you su-

  

_Oh._

  

April catches the words before they leave her vocal chords

 

She had the night off.

 

"Oh, come the fuck on."

  

And then, almost automatically.

 

"Mommy says not to use bad wowds."

  

Bright green eyes blink back at her, and quiet voice, like a wisp in the wind.

 

She thinks it's then when she nearly lost the last vestiges of sanity she's managed to scrape together mere moments earlier.

 

Frayed and fraying imaginary seams and loose cotton threads, shredded apart.

 

Desperately tied back together.

 

Realizes, with a bitter thought, that all these shitty events are nothing more than a different version of the same damn story.

 

 

* 

 

 

 

The man seizes beneath her hands, the movement so jarring, so shocking, that she barely manages to tilt his head.

  

He starts seizing and April realizes, with a startling concern, that she can't help him.

 

She has nothing left.

  

And then she's praying, lips moving in a silent march because she has absolutely nothing left to do.

 

She's praying, and for the first time this month, she really hopes God is listening.

 

 

*

 

 

 

"Mommy says that if someone gets a boo-boo, I should pway so God makes them feel all better. Do you t'wink God will make daddy better?"

 

A hard, heavy lump forms in her throat when his question reaches her ears, steals the air from her lungs and sends tears welling in her eyes.

  

_Where is God now?_

 

"Apwil?"

 

She nods, once, and then twice.

 

"Yea. Yeah. I think that'll definitely help. You just close your eyes, and God will make your dad all better, okay?"

  

The smile that appears on the little boy's lips does nothing to help the lump in her throat, nothing to banish the tears or bring back oxygen to her lungs.

 

_Please, please, please.._

 

(She lies to herself. States that the sudden tears are from the booze and the concussion and definitely not the familiarity of the situation. Settles on praying for reasons she'd like to avoid and ignores the inexplicable true she can't escape.)

 

 

 

 *

 

 

Per the boy's reluctant admission, he tells her what happened.

  

About how he and his dad we driving to home and a really, really fast car hit them.

  

How he remembers the car driving off.

 

He's crying by then end of the story, and the trauma surgeon reaches over, pulls the small boy in a one-armed embrace.

 

"My name is Sammy. Mommy says it's showt for Samuel."

  

And she loses her marbles all over again.

 

Rolling and rolling away.

 

 

 *

 

 

 

It's a matter of hours and days and minutes and blood numbing seconds before and ambulance pulls up, and she vaguely recognizes as Warren comes up to her. 

  

Another hour before she's seated with stitches for a gash she didn't even know she had and Warren's never-ending questions.

 

An hour before she finally managed to convince him at, yes, she is fine, and no, he doesn't need to call anyone, and finished the conversation with a smile they both know she absolutely didn't mean.

 

And ten agonizing minutes in a waiting room for a mystery man she didn't even know and the feeling of her head pounding and pounding and pounding and pounding.

 

A staccato beat against the already fading beat of her heart.

 

The sight of a wavy blonde head out of the corner of her eye reminds her that word travels w _ay_ too quickly in the hospital.

 

Causes her to bury her head in her hands and sit up straighter, feigning the look of _being okay._

 

Then pediatric surgeon's voice calling her name, insistent and cautious and concerned. 

 

A cacophony of worry, spaced in several carefully stuttered syllables.

 

"April?"

 

Softer this time, gentle and soft in a way that smashes through her resolve, grates at each and every one of her frayed, unraveling edges.  

 

"Are you okay?"

 

She laughs then, because _fuck,_ she is definitely not okay _._

 

The sound vibrates the linoleum tile beneath her shoes.

 

She looks at them, her shoes.

 

Looks to see if the ground and the hospital and the earth are all shaking as much as she thinks they are. 

 

Stares and stares and stares until she notices a dark, splotchy mark at the bottom of her shoe and panics.

 

Wonder's if it's blood.

 

His blood.

 

Her blood.

 

_Someone's blood._

 

She thinks she might be crying.

 

Or dead.

 

Or dying.

 

Or not there at all.

 

She really can't figure out what the hell has happened since the world got wrenched sideways, so she doesn't dwell on the possibility of being for too long.

 

Just sits there. 

 

Waits for the inevitable to come.

 

 

 

*

 

 

"April?"

 

Her voice breaks through the viscous fluid April feels suspended in and raising her head suddenly takes way more effort than it should. 

 

The blonde draws the syllables out, cautious in a way that startles her, makes April certain that she's definitely not going to like where the rest of the conversation heads.

 

"Are you okay?"

 

Arizona's words, she thinks, are just getting more and more ridiculous.

 

She nods anyway, a slight motion she isn't even sure is performed.

 

She nods instead; realizing that she doesn't actually know the answer to the woman's question and figures that whatever the answer is, whether it be a yes or no or maybe or maybe-freaking-not, is all just about irrelevant anyway.

 

Nods again with a finality that neither of them believes and inquiries about the boy and his father, a quiet question that trembles as it leaves her vocal chords.

 

"He's going to be okay. The young boy is just fine, and Amelia is almost done repairing the damage to the dad's brain. He-...."

 

Her brain shuts out the rest of response, focuses its attention back on her shoes and nods whenever it feels appropriate.

 

The trauma surgeon can see the blonde's lips moving around the words; dizzying.

 

Bright syllables and consonants and vowels that drown out the silence and screaming in her head, the staccato thump and sound of her voice getting lost between the middle of it all.

 

And then her words morph and twist until they've become screams that float into the atmosphere above her, and suddenly she's staring at Reed's blood flowing at the corner of the room.

 

Staring as it snakes and trickles down the tile and then there's someone sitting on her freaking chest, heavy, and she wants to laugh but can't because she doesn't even think she's breathing.

 

She's left nodding to absent words and staring at Reed's imaginary blood, marbles lost and rolling.

 

Florid psychosis, fought against and failed nonetheless.

 

Hysteria bubbling and settling deep inside her bones; hollow and hollowing.

 

Empty and emptying.

 

 

 

 *

 

 

 

She sees Reed and crimson rivers and hands that won't stop shaking.

 

Stained from years of horror and harsh, gruesome events that the universe has so pleasantly served them with.

 

An endless cycle, never ending.

 

 

 

 *

 

 

 

In the end, she's in the fourth row of a bus before she can register the moments that have been made. She faintly recognizes the fact that her car is being repaired and someone (probably Arizona) offered a ride that she refused and now she's halfway to a destination she fleetingly remembered picking.

 

A well-versed motion of duck and run.

 

Escape and evade.

 

Deny and avoid.

 

What specifically happened in the intervening minutes, days, hours, seconds, she can't even begin to remember.

 

All propensities for independent thought left her hours ago, taken by adrenaline that faded the haze of being drunk, fear and unbridled unease that never went away.

 

Cognitive function has since been replaced with a oppressive silence that settles, heavy and thick, on her chest. 

 

Breathing around the pressure and panic is a nearly impossible undertaking, and she decides to let the panic consume her, the sound of silence coagulating in the empty space in her lungs.

 

A heated interval between rigid horror and oxygen deprivation, a here and a there.

 

Another store front passes out of the corner of her eye as the bus makes a turn on the intersection that nearly killed her hours earlier.

 

A song plays through her ear buds, a melody she doesn't recognize.

 

She focuses on it, on the words and sounds that fill the silence in her head instead of the wreckage in her peripheral, a melancholy that adds to the pressure on her chest, heavier and heavier and heavier until she thinks that she might be crying again.

 

Isn't really sure why or how that happened,

 

Can't gather the energy to find out.

 

Just focuses on the song she doesn't recognize and lets the cold leach from the window and deep into her skull.

 

Settle. 

 

 

*

 

 

She somehow manages to stumble to her destination.

 

It's warm. And musty.

 

Dust floating through the air and the dull fragrance of burned candle wax and thick heat that contrasts against the biting cold that's burrowed into her bones.

 

Her movements are automatic, robotic and monotonous.

 

Feet marching, one after the other, stumbling and staggering and moving until her hand rests on a worn wooden handle and she's sitting on a frayed red cushion.

 

Breathe.

 

Inhale.

 

Exhale.

 

In.

 

Out.

 

A voice fills the enclosed space, soft and familiar, waiting a response.

 

In and out.

 

Exhale.

 

Inhale.

 

Her response, an echo for however is listening.

 

"Forgive me Father, for I have sinned."

 

An apology.

 

Her default these days.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about it being late. I had computer troubles all weekend. 
> 
> I should update again before the end of this week.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed :)


	4. Truck Driver's Blues

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Possibly the final chapter for this one. I might continue, but it all depends on the storyline Grey's continues on. Enjoy!

 

 

_Though you may have made me see troubles,_

_Many and bitter,_

_You will restore my life again;_

_\- Psalms 72:20_

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Inside, her house is empty and quiet.

 

 

A gust of air catches the door and slams it into the frame behind her back as she's setting her bag down.

 

 

She flinches violently, jarred and unhinged. Barely manages to swallow down the sound of a hollowed yelp.

 

 

Traps it between her teeth, inside her vocal chords.

 

 

But only just.

 

 

She hasn't been home for two days.

 

 

Spent the first day racing through a brutal trauma shift and the second organizing and judging and planning a contest she didn't want to be a part of.

 

 

She realizes, oddly, that she doesn't recognize the apartment.

 

 

Whenever Harriet was home, everything was warm. Welcoming.

 

 

Familiar.

 

 

But Jackson had her tonight, and all she could was focus on the darkness and the electricity crackling in the air.

 

 

On the shadows that drift and fall haphazardly throughout the kitchen, latch themselves onto the curtains.

 

 

The wine bottle that's stationed on the counter reminds her that Vik pulled an extra shift.

 

 

She hadn't quite managed to put it away from the last time he was here.

 

 

Or the time before that.

 

 

(Really, who's counting?)

 

 

The first mouthful burns, like she isn't as experienced as she should be.

 

 

It burns, but not nearly enough.

 

 

She thinks, fleetingly, of dead babies and unblinking eyes and ghosts that fall her wherever she goes.

 

 

In the ER.

 

 

Behind the supply cabinets.

 

 

Waiting at the pews of the church she now persistently ignores.

 

 

In her head.

 

 

She thinks of people that were but aren't anymore and swallows the guilt around another pull just because she can.

 

 

*

 

 

 

"Screw you, Reed."

 

 

Spoken to no one in particular.

 

 

The trauma surgeon is somewhat surprised when no one responds.

 

 

 _Apparently_ , all her marbles haven't rolled the fuck away.

 

 

(More sarcasm, harty har ha.)

 

* 

 

 

 

She's showering before she can put the actions it took to get there together.

 

 

Somehow, steps A to B to C no longer seem important.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

Feels the tears mix with the soapy water and turn the tile salt-water froth.

 

 

She lets out the scream from earlier.

 

 

A breathy paradox of silence through clenched teeth, suffocating silence and guilt and not much else.

 

 

She lets the water fill the creases in her face.

 

 

Trickle down her skin.

 

 

Seep into her marrow.

 

 

She lets her mind drift, wonders if this is what Meredith felt like.

 

 

When she was drowning.

 

 

She thinks she might be drowning now....

 

 

*

 

 

 

She's starting to break all her shitty self-imposed rules.

 

 

One by one by one.

 

 

Breaking and fracturing into splinters at her feet.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

The truck picks up in speed.

 

 

The trunk is locked.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

Some asshole neighbor had hosted a party.

 

 

She knows this because the music, party music, manages to seep through her walls.

 

 

Creating minute gaps and crevices that are promptly filled with laughter and life and music and joy and a thousand other freaking things she can barely bring herself to recognize.

 

 

A pounding, litany of beats form behind her left eyebrow, symmetrical to bass next door, and she suddenly wants them gone.

 

 

The noises.

 

 

The cheer.

 

 

The people.

 

 

Disappeared and fucking gone.

 

 

Into the ether, never to been seen again.

 

 

But, it's not like her wishes and prayers are ever really answered, so she finds another way to erase them.

 

 

A bottle of wine and a empty gaze aimed at the adjacent wall.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

She chugs wine straight from the bottle. 

 

 

A desperate bid to forget remembering for just a few more minutes.

 

 

Tomorrow still seems too far away.

 

 

*

 

 

The truck spins again. Spins and spirals out of control.

 

 

The driver all but sleeps.

 

 

 

 *

 

 

Someone, cranks the music up a pinch.

 

 

Or several.

 

 

She pours herself another glass of whatever she moved onto and counts the tap-tap cacophony of beat that mirrors her own. 

 

 

Counts. Loses count. Starts again.

 

 

Rinse.

 

 

And repeat.

 

 

Twists her fingers into some abstract form of a fist around the fabric of her t-shirt and holds on.

 

 

Tight. Rage pulsing under her skin and wine-drenched. 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

She pretends the wine and tequila and the myriad nights of sex are nothing more than the blissful distraction they haven't quite yet become.

 

 

She's way past pretending that she's interested in anything beyond this fractured version of living, a faux comfort in a world that provides none.

 

 

The Pad Thai she begrudgingly ordered tastes like hollow bitterness.

 

 

A flavor she knows only too well.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

She spends the next couple minutes counting droplets of water on the glass.

 

 

Gets to twelve before she's distracted by the beat again, listens as the song changes to another melody she doesn't recognize.

 

 

Loses track because paying attention to anything that isn't her own drunken, pathetic misery is apparently way too much to ask.

 

 

Watches the dew split her reflection into one..

 

 

and two...

 

 

and four...

 

 

and seven.

 

 

Remembers a similar effect occurring throughout the past days.

 

 

Events split into _before_.

 

 

And _after_.

 

 

*

 

 

_Before_

 

 

_Vik meets her in a on-call room because both of they're way too tired to drive anywhere._

 

 

_And cab fees are luxuries neither of them can afford._

 

 

_They've started a cycle of grueling seventy-two hour shifts and incomplete interludes in dimly lit on-call rooms, clothes discarded and pooled in hazardous piles around them._

 

 

_Her form of a desperate self-loathing that can only be cured between the heady hours between midnight and four am, cheap wine smuggled in a bid to forget._

 

 

_Backs arched against white washed walls._

 

_A sun that never sets._

 

 

_A testament to walking warning symbol she has become._

 

 

 

 *

 

 

 

_After_

 

Vik texts her a picture that one of the other interns took of him and puppy in the Peds ward.

 

 

He's smiling, eyes wide and bright, holding a puppy in one arm and a little boy with shaggy hair and kind eyes in the other.

 

 

She remembers that she passed that same boy's father in his room many hours ago.

 

 

Sammy.

 

 

The wine comes back up two seconds later.

 

 

Emptied.

 

 

 *

 

 

_Before_

 

 

_Amelia walks around with this determination that leads to sleepless nights and shaking, yearning hands. Adds an empty look to her already pale blue eyes._

 

 

_Alex fidgets his way through shifts with half-drained beer and a sadness in his._

 

 

_Asks questions the neurosurgeon doesn't know how to answer._

 

 

_Kimmie keeps on singing._

 

 

 

*

 

 

_After_

 

 

It's hours, minutes, days, seconds, weeks, centuries.

 

 

April sitting next to the brunette, her mouth opened halfway in forming an apology, because it _almost_ seems right.

 

 

_I'm sorry you weren't chosen._

 

_Your project was great._

 

_You'll figure this out?_

 

But really, anything she could come up with is all cliché, an empty clusterfuck of platitudes and reassurances that mean nothing to the dying girl in the MRI machine.

 

 

So, she lets the words die and melt on her tongue, lets the sentences and syllables half-formed settle into her vocal chords, creep down to her stomach.

 

 

And slowly watches Amelia pace and pace and pace. And Alex drink.

 

 

Wonders how long it'll take before Alex is the one pacing and Amelia is the one drinking.

 

 

(It can't be too long now)

 

 

* 

 

 

_Before_

 

 

_Owen walks around with this knight-in-shining-armor, GI-Joe God-complex that makes April want to punch him._

 

 

_She doesn't._

 

 

_But the resolve she has is short-lived and draining, and, if her gives her just one more trauma speech..._

 

 

*

 

 

_After_

 

 

Owen gives her a pointed stare of pity before she clocks off for the night.

 

 

One that she sure as hell never asked for but somehow ended up with in spades none the less.

 

It follows her home.

 

 

Another ghost.

 

 

 

 *

 

 

_Before_

 

 

_Jo still hasn't figured out the magnitude of the situation._

 

 

_Meredith, who is pacing and calling and sighing all the damn night, has._

 

 

_April moves to another on-call room that night._

 

 

 

 *

 

 

_After_

 

 

A shoulder to the newly painted woodwork greys her vision to blurry and blue and a black to grey.

 

 

A faded conglomerate of muted colors.

 

 

She had just about gathered the courage to go home.

 

 

Catches sight of a blonde blob sitting eight feet away.

 

 

Meredith is still on the phone.

 

 

Still has no answers.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

_Before_

_Arizona rattles off statistics._

 

_Sentences that choke her throat, deprive lungs of air and brains from thought._

 

_But the trauma surgeon can't seem to make her stop, can't find the words to try, so the blonde continues._

 

 

_Casually._

_While she chews through her freaking strawberry bagel._

 

 

_Chats up a storm about infant mortality rates and pre-existing conditions in mothers and other words that haunt April's every living hours._

_Speaks of truths and hopes and everything else in between._

_Words that chase April down in the corners of her mind._

_A losing race._

 

*

_After_

 

 

A scotch on the rocks is to her left.

 

 

The sight of lips clashing as Arizona and Carina play pool, to her right.

 

The trauma surgeon waves the scotch in the air, a warning flag.

 

 

No-one will notice.

 

 

Laughs. A harsh, subdued bark.

 

 

No one is left to notice.

 

 

 

 

 *

 

 

 

Months pass.

 

 

Years and years and centuries pass.

 

 

Eternities.

 

 

A million moments in the one-hour time span between the end of the party next door and her fourth glass.

 

 

Memories twist.

 

 

Fifty percent caused by the booze, another fifty by heaving guilt.

 

 

One hundred percent freaking spiraling.

 

 

(Again.)

 

 

 

 *

 

 

 

April's world runs on cold alcohol and spilled blood, the taste of the first often burning like the feel of the second.

 

 

There are words on her tongue, but there's also tequila, the two mixing and swirling into a uncomfortable, almost tangible, presence in her throat.

 

 

She isn't sure which one she's more afraid of swallowing.

 

 

 

 

 *

 

 

 

She pretends the path she's placed herself on is okay.

 

 

Normal.

 

 

Pretends that she isn't holding back a constant scream every time Vik's lips meet hers.

 

 

Or every time her fingertips run through short hair that is never short enough.

 

 

Brown eyes that make her cold and numb because there isn't the slightest speck of blue in them.

 

 

She pretends that if everything goes on this way for long enough, everything wrong with this whole arrangement will slowly turn to right.

 

 

That the line in the sand where it all fades to inevitable _change_ will blur and disappear altogether.

 

 

She pretends, most of all, that nothing has changed.

 

(Everything has changed.)

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

She takes the bus to a bar that could be Joe's but isn't.

 

The fringed seat is solid against her shoulder blades, and somehow, that grounds her more than the booze ever could.

 

 

The smoke-stained atmosphere of an unfamiliar bar makes her head pound.

 

 

_Thump, thump thump._

 

 

Makes her promise not to get any more drunk.

 

 

The thought is idyllic and naïve and it all lasts about thirteen seconds.

 

 

 

 *

 

 

 

She somehow finds a spot all the way in the back, shoulders pressed hard to the wall.

 

 

Holding her up, taking the weight of cracking, crumbling self-resolve.

 

 

Bruised and beating.

 

 

A foreign yet familiar pounding takes up it's permanent residence in the cavity where her heart and lungs once were.

 

 

Liquor and guilt, coursing through her veins.

 

 

The world spins.

 

 

And dips.

 

 

And tilts.

 

 

A juxtaposition of left and right and any other direction that's always off center.

 

 

Never quite rights itself.

 

 

She spares a glance at the floor.

 

 

Sees gushing, languid rivers of crimson red and fragmented pieces of promises.

 

 

Chipped away at splitting seams.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

She's thrown herself into an abyss.

 

 

A proverbial sword, blunted and raw, a misguided attempt at martyrdom that never really bode well with the alcohol burning down her throat.

 

 

Wounded pride and all the jazz that accompanies it.

 

 

(And loneliness and regret and pain and unlinking eyes and guilt a hundred other screaming realities that she can't bring himself to name. Raw and ragged.)

 

 

She counts the passing minutes like they're sheep.

 

 

One, two, three, four, five...

 

 

Watches them pass by from a distance, dissociated and blurry.

 

 

Uses the amber liquid swirling in her glass as means to warm the feet and inches of black, frigid cold that freezes her whole.

 

 

Sends an unspoken goal to the big guy upstairs, dares him to stop her.

 

 

He doesn't.

 

 

(She reckons he's still asleep at the wheel.)

 

 

*

 

 

 

She's always half the distance between a open door and a closed one.

 

 

Going nowhere fast.

 

 

Two steps forward, two steps back.

 

 

Still losing.

 

 

The swirls of amber in her shallow glass feel wrong.

 

 

Colors too vivid, too raw.

 

 

Like yesterday and tomorrow and an infinite forever that she was promised but never received.

 

 

She makes another bet. A game.

 

 

Two shots.

 

 

Then another.

 

 

And another.

 

 

And then the bartender cuts her off, and she's sipping soda.

 

 

Still betting.

 

 

Still gets no answers.

 

 

(He's still fucking sleeping.)

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

 

Cynicism and self-doubt and raw, pulsing rage become carefully constructed walls, (a mirage) to hide behind, exhaustion has now become her only means of escape and evade.

 

 

A desperate, white-knuckled attempt at self-preservation that was forged upon realization of the grand scheme of things.

 

 

 

 *

 

 

 

It works well until it doesn't.

 

 

* 

 

 

 

She's seen the years melt and paint peel and blood, leaked and lost, leave stains on frayed carpet floor.

 

 

Macabre onion layers, peeled and removed until nothing real is left.

 

 

She shoulders away from the wall and realizes that she stands alone, unsteady on numbing feet and heavy under oppressive realization.

 

 

_I'm okay._

 

 

Falling towards a fallacy no one was meant to believe.

 

 

Falling and falling and falling.

 

 

End over end.

 

 

The haunting soundtrack of her own echoing existence.

 

 

 

 *

 

 

 

She walks home.

 

 

Doesn't worry about getting run over or mugged or murdered because all of those options are unlikely in the face of suffocating extraneous drama that fills her daily life.

 

 

It's cold. Muddy puddles and black slush and sirens echoing in the distance.

 

 

Too much, not enough, never enough distance between her and the death that surrounds them.

 

 

The atmosphere shifts, steals her breathe and dangles it somewhere up and high left from her head.

 

 

Her feet stop moving. Pause.

 

 

Dares herself to wonder how deep she's really gotten in this whole, haphazard picture of a mess.

 

 

Doubts her ability _not_ to screw up in the same jagged, incongruous exhale.

 

 

Fifteen stumbling minutes to go.

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

Her hands shake.

 

 

Panic and ice and blood and silence and more silence and the heavy, drowning, _crushing_ , weight of knowledge.

 

 

Her hand shake at the realization that everything she has ever been taught is a lie.

 

 

Hope is bullshit and everyone's going to hell along with it.

 

 

And other countless morose thoughts that fill her brain as the haze of drunk seeps in.

 

 

Settles.

 

 

Her hands shake.

 

 

Hands shake and the moon shines on this quaint little church across the street, which is all kinds of irony and echoing screams of _fuck you_ that curdles her blood.

 

 

Thick and rubbery.

 

 

Her hands shake and shake as the panic and weight and denial of what has occurred is fully realized, growing and grown into to a size of something she could no longer pretend she'd yet to notice.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

The metaphorical truck is speeding.

 

 

An inevitable dissolution of comfort and hope that were beginning to tighten under crumpling resolve.

 

 

Noose-like.

 

 

The truck slips. Swerves and twists and breaks apart at it's very seams, spiraling into a hell that has no beginning.

 

 

No end.

 

 

She bangs on the trunk top.

 

 

The driver still sleeps.

 

 

(That particular outcome seemed inevitable in the long run.)

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

That boy that the firefighter, _Herrera, A_ _ndy Herrera_ , shoved her hand in, is, by some miracle, alive.

 

 

And she says a miracle because he lost sixty percent of his blood volume and his heart stopped _seven goddamn times_ in the OR.

 

 

The touch and go of quivering hearts and blood lost, leaking, feels achingly familiar.

 

 

Like free fall.

 

 

She should be happy.

 

 

Should strike off a tally mark in the W column and keep it at that.

 

 

Instead, she's drowning in white noise and static, taken aback by the rise and fall of the chest of a boy who _should_ be dead.

 

 

The entirety of it all bounces around in her skull, raw, the pressure excruciating.

 

 

Reed's ghost laughs from the corner of the room. Mocking.

 

 

Blurs and blurs until her reflection splits, too many faces to even keep track of.

 

 

Too much madness to think she'll ever be sane again.

 

 

 

 *

 

 

 

She spends the rest of the night in the chapel.

 

 

Considers going to Joe's, but too many memories and too much pity buried deep inside those bright lights and phantom smells of booze and cigarette smoke.

 

 

Considers going home but Catherin and Jackson took Harriet to the mall and Vik is at Joe's she doesn't want to prepare for the inevitable silence again.

 

 

In the end, the church she once called home is less crushing than the blood lost and soulless eyes that follow her everywhere else.

 

 

(Ironic. A paradox she isn't disappointed to notice.)

 

 

She feels lost.

 

 

Like she's been suspended in the open spaces between the pews, ghost-like.

 

 

She feels lost.

 

 

And decides she doesn't like it.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

"Please, God."

 

 

Her lips are moving in a silent march.

 

 

A prayer she doesn't remember the words to.

 

 

Doesn't remember even starting.

 

 

_If none of this is real, then what's the point?_

 

 

Decides, in the end, that none of this will matter.

 

 

_Where is God now?_

 

 

Eases herself into the oblivion she's been desperately avoiding.

 

 

_If these are all just stories..._

 

Continues because she has no answers and somewhere, in the hospital, that boy's heart is still beating, and whether it's _God's will_ or a _miracle_ or a coincidence or just plain luck, she needs something to go on.

 

 

An answer.

 

 

_Where is God now?_

 

 

_Thump thump thump thumpthumpthumpthu-..._

 

 

The truck steadies.

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

She tastes malted liquor in her mouth.

 

 

Shard and acidic, coating her tongue as early morning rays fill the contours of her skin.

 

 

She doesn't deny that she's changed.

 

 

Doesn't deny that she still has a long way to go and the sex and drinks and sarcastic, snide comments may not go away for a while.

 

 

She gets up and the taste of malt liquor coats her mouth.

 

 

But whether it's because of the calm or peace or something else she's feeling, she's okay with it.

 

 

She gets the feeling she'll be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a prompt by PandaLiz.
> 
>  
> 
> Will probably be multi-chapter.
> 
>  
> 
> Comments? Thoughts? Put 'em below.


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